


The Very Counterfeit of Death

by ATiredPan



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Also! Please tell me if I missed any tags!, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But he pretends not to be, Gen, Genius James T. Kirk, Genocide, Humor, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Jim is an Angry Child, Listen ST:ID wasn't canon, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starvation, Tarsus IV, Underage Prostitution, Xenophobia, additional warnings in notes of each chapter, also this universe is a Tarsus 9 one but not a ST:ID Tarsus 9, because god forbid Jim Kirk receive help dealing with trauma, but it leads right into, he lands on a planet that believes you can meditate the pain away, he's too competitive, it's a repression haven, kind of unsuccessfully, of sorts, so justified? honestly?, which is like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-03-30 03:58:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13942098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ATiredPan/pseuds/ATiredPan
Summary: That left option two, which Jim would have been a hell of a lot more confident in if it weren’t for the bizzarity of the idea of sending an emotionally compromised, PTSD stricken 13 year old to live with Vulcans.Or the one in which Jim somehow still manages to be the most contrary, unpredictable individual in the galaxy when growing up on VulcanUpdates every 10 days. (No it doesn't. 10-15 days. Maybe. I'm working on it.)





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm Mim, nice to meet you! Here's a prologue to a thing! This is not the first fic I've ever written, but it's the first one I've shared publicly since I was like 12 so I'm a little rusty. Also I may edit a few things here and there once I figure out how this works. That being said, I plan to keep consistent updates for this; they're not going to be daily or anything but I have at least 20 chapters drawn up. I hope you like it!

Jim was like 98% sure he’d prefer this situation to the alternative, which was the only reason he was going along with it. 

That, and despite all his efforts to act towards the contrary, he was still just, so, so tired. He weighed into the 50th percentile, now, you could no longer see the shape of his skull through the skin on his face, and his eyes were no longer dull. 

He was still as tired as he had been eight months ago, making 98% sure enough for him not to waste any energy on the nightmare of going back to live with Frank. After all, not even two years ago, he’d thought there was no situation worse than living with the bastard. 

Jim knows now that wasn’t strictly true, but a dark side of him debates it in his head often enough that he also knows there’s no way he’s going to go back.

So that left option two, which Jim would have been a hell of a lot more confident in if it weren’t for the bizzarity of the idea of sending an emotionally compromised, PTSD stricken 13 year old to live with Vulcans.

 

The idea had been proposed around six months ago, when his attending physician aboard the U.S.S. Izlet Miru had asked if he was ready to speak to his legal guardian, and he had snarled out that he would rather die. He may have also added a colorful description of why, just to be petty. 

Doctor Boyce’s eyes had turned dark and sad, and he’d stormed away, muttering under his breath about what he would do to someone named Chris if something wasn’t taken cared of. 

Jim laughed about this a lot, now that he knew Doctor Boyce was talking about Commander Pike. The good doctor was a pacifist, and there was still no one he was less likely to harm than the ship’s young XO.

There was no need to test the theory though, because the Commander had been equally outraged. 

With Pike’s help, they had been able to convince the Federation’s child care workers that George Kirk: Starfleet Hero's kid needed to find a new living arrangement. One that didn’t involve staying with the creep who was living in George Kirk: Starfleet Hero's house in Nowhere, Iowa, bruising up his kid and cheating on his widow. At least until said widow came back from the black, off on the edges of the unknown, where discovery happened and intergalactic calls didn’t.

The child care workers had already had to deal with Jim's stunning number of dilemmas that came with being George Kirk: Starfleet Hero's kid. They weren't as used to these dilemmas as Jim was, though he thought they were handling it admirably. 

Striking the name of George Kirk: Starfleet Hero’s kid from the list of Tarsus survivors didn't result in any alcoholism, for example… at least until Jim had gotten tired of the proceedings and done it himself. Separating Jim from his kids, (the whole nine week process of it) had only involved two resignations. 

Telling Jim that he couldn’t tell his mother about Tarsus until she had completed her tour of duty went slightly less smoothly. They told him Starfleet didn’t want their best engineer emotionally compromised. They had spent days justifying it to him. In the end, Jim had stared them down with a terrifying, piercing gaze from his sick bed. He'd said Winona Lawson was tougher than Starfleet’s entire broken, manipulative administration. If dealing with fifteen years of duty away from home and her kids forced upon her three years after her husband died didn’t prove that, they were idiots. 

After two months of dealing with George Kirk: Starfleet Hero's kid, they seemed pretty content to let someone else take some responsibility for their least favorite patient and keep them from having to put George Kirk: Starfleet Hero’s kid into the foster care system. But maybe Jim was just projecting.

Jim very much appreciated that Commander Pike had offered seconds later to adopt him. He was still glad that Doctor Boyce had been present to call him “Chris, honey,” very platonically and tell him all the reasons that was a Very Bad Idea.

(Reason number one being no one could ground Pike for all the good in the galaxy, and space wasn’t an approved address listing for a trauma survivor.)

 

And that was when the Vulcan head botanist had the brilliant idea to send him off to the middle of the desert.

Jim had almost laughed, because he knew enough about Vulcans from Hoshi to know they wouldn’t think highly of Jim. 

Remembering Hoshi was enough, though, for Jim to sober and sit up straight as he could in his seat to look the Vulcan in the eye. 

The Vulcan, who Jim had recognized as Lieutenant Commander S'yekh Pi’hirat Senn, had stared back, not bothering even a passing glance over his hollow face, or the bandages that had at the time covered more of him than not. That, more than any of the cool, even assurances Senn had made, left Jim satisfied despite the lack of alternatives. 

He didn’t like being backed into corners, but he was tired, and it was fine.

 

The six months necessary for Jim to be physically healthy and functional enough to leave his medical team for Vulcan’s harsh conditions went by like a whirlwind. 

He finally managed to coerce the child support workers into getting him into contact with his kids, and every day Jim would sit in the medbay and listen to Angie and Matty regale the latest adventures in their more high profile recovery over the comm. 

At least, every day until Beth accidentally mentioned catching up with JT on a live camera and had gossip mongers across the galaxy ready to fix their grimy claws into her for details. Starfleet released a press statement about an undisclosed 9th survivor who would appreciate privacy, (as if the eight other children wouldn’t), and forbade Jim from keeping in contact to maintain secrecy. 

So now it was every night, through Amelia’s aunt’s comm while the guardians distracted the camera people with their tear stricken, if maybe slightly overdone accounts of harrowing moments they had experienced with the kids. 

 

Miss Genevieve, Lisette’s old dance teacher and the only person willing to take in the traumatized eight year old, was Jim’s favorite to watch on screen. 

Maybe it was because he knew them, because he had looked all of them in the eyes to see if they would actually do what was best for his kids before he left them together out of his line of sight, but the mourning and anguish the guardians showed on TV was so hilarious. 

When Jim had watched an interview of Miss Genevieve, for example, he told Commander Pike those tears in her eyes were real good evidence of her performing arts degree. Pike had gotten all panicked about Jim’s emotional state for a minute, but eased up and jokingly called him a cynic when Jim smiled at him. 

He didn’t think it was cynicism, though. 

When Miss Genevieve had gotten through administration to see Lisette, she hadn’t been crying. She had been a little flushed and out of breath, but she took one look at the little girl sleeping and collapsed in relief. She caught Jim’s eye, shook her head, and told him that before Lisette had left, she had begged to stay and keep taking dance classes. She told him with a soft laugh that she was going to buy her a whole dance studio, the second they got back home. 

Jim thought that offhand, honest promise of home meant a lot more than sobbing in front of a camera ever could, but maybe he just didn’t know any better.

Any time he escaped medical, Jim was exploring the ship and sticking his nose into top secret babble with the sheer power of his inquisitiveness. 

After a couple days, he bonded with a Junior Lieutenant named Fitzwells down in Engineering over old terran cars, and she taught him how to fix a broken autofilter vac, and then every single member of the crew seemed to be fighting over Jim.

It was like a dam broke; Pike and Boyce were no longer the only people acting like Jim’s new best friend. 

Betta Kroix, the Head Scientist, would all but drag Jim out of the medbay once his daily treatment was done to show him cool element formations they’d found on survey, after zhe found out that Jim could hold his own in a conversation on molecular exochemistry and made it zhir personal mission to never let any of Jim’s scientific curiousity to go unexplored. 

Kroix’ second, Jerome Tuscond, told his helmsman boyfriend about the Science crew’s quest to teach Jim everything there was to know about everything worth knowing, and then suddenly Jim had a standing invitation from Captain Jenza (that felt an awful lot like a demand) to visit the bridge whenever. He started stopping by whenever the labs were full, or engineering was in its biweekly crisis mode. 

Captain Jenza would chastise the crew for petty mistakes by saying they should just be replaced by Jim, who would nod solemnly and tell them how to fix their mistakes in ways ranging from practical to almost mythological until either Jim or Jenza cracked and started laughing. 

Once Commander Pike walked onto the bridge half asleep for Gamma shift to find Jim conversing with the Communications officer in Tamarian and gaped for a few minutes before telling Jim to go to bed.

 

Jim’s least favorite part of the day was preparing for Vulcan. By this point he had made it out of the 5th percentile in weight, and was declared strong enough to start building a tolerance for the Vulcan atmosphere. 

The first time Jim was put in the simulation room, with the oxygen too thin to breath and his body twice as heavy as it was meant to be, he seriously considered jumping ship the next time they docked. It felt like he was pulling himself through water, like a nightmare of a situation Jim had never been able to afford. 

But because the other choice was giving up, he pushed on through the months, until he gained enough muscle to do more than trudge through the tasks set before him.  By the 5th month he was doing his circus gymnastics, to the utter shock and mild awe of his medical observation team.

Other than physically, preparing for Vulcan consisted mostly of studying at a level of difficulty Jim, for all his genius, struggled with keeping on top of at first. 

The one and only time Jim complained, Lieutenant Senn had told him that he could elect to attend classes with Vulcan students a few years his prior, but if there was one thing Jim wouldn’t stand for, it was being underestimated. The only person allowed to point out his inadequacies was himself, damnit. 

It took about a month from that point for Jim to reach the advanced level for his age group in exobiology, a few more weeks and he was ahead in subspace geometry, and within three months he was four years ahead of the Vulcan standard for xenolinguistics. 

Once, Jim corrected Lieutenant Senn’s Andorian grammar, and Jim could have sworn the look he got in return was down right pleased.

 

Chris and Phil, who Jim had stopped calling by their titles to annoy them and failed to revert back when they delighted in it, would often stop by when that was happening.  

Lieutenant Senn wasn’t walking on eggshells around him, which Jim was glad for. But on occasion, he would inquire into how he had obtained some knowledge not generally expected of a 13 year old Terran, and the answer was almost always Hoshi, or Kodos. For two very different reasons, Jim's throat closed up whenever he attempted to talk about either of them. 

So Phil would laugh at the face Jim was making at whatever was giving him the most trouble that day, or ask Jim how one of his injuries were feeling with genuine concern in his voice along with his intentions to move away from the topic. 

Or Chris would act even more bubbly than usual and ask Senn something that he had ‘just remembered he’d been wondering about and didn’t want to forget.’

They would otherwise wait patiently for the lesson to end before whisking Jim away to “supervise” him on a walk around the ship.

Sometimes Jim and Phil would go pester Chris on the bridge, trying to see who could get him to start the most ridiculous tangent. 

Or Jim and Chris would go to the medbay on off hours and see who could get Phil to laugh first. 

Jim had once asked Fitzwells if Chris and Phil were using him as an excuse to see each other more often. Fitzwells had told him with a long-suffering sigh that they needed no excuse. She worked as neither of their direct subordinates, or anywhere that may justify how often she saw the two together. 

Reginald, an ensign whose surname was so pretentious he preferred to go by Reginald, informed Jim that Doctor Boyce and Commander Pike always came arm in arm to welcome new passengers aboard. 

Lieutenant Commander Genna had piped up from around the corner that the senior bridge crew had a running tally on the number of times they’ve been caught platonically holding hands. Then Genna had pulled Jim over to a hydraulic pump and showed him how to fix it so the engine wouldn’t blow up, as if Jim would ever be put into a situation like that.

 

And so it had gone, until now, eight months after he first boarded the Izlet Miru, facing down the senior crew with a clear bill of health and a bag with more things than he’d had when he arrived.

“Unless you want to tell anyone, only Lieutenant Senn’s family and Vulcan High Command will know the exactly why you’re in Shi’Kar, okay? Otherwise, it’s just ‘extenuating circumstances your guardians wished not to disclose.’” Captain Jenza smiled, and Jim nodded.

“When do you guys leave dock?”

“Tomorrow,” Phil cut in, almost apologetic.

“So I guess I’d better get my goodbyes out of the way, huh?” Jim forced a smile, wishing not for the first time that he had just a little more time, wishing he hadn’t gotten so attached when it, like every other thing Jim had ever had in his life resembling stability, was going to drop him like a hot potato. Chris flicked his ear.

“Well say bye to the crew, but don’t make it sound like you’re going to leave us hanging. You’ve got all our comm numbers, kid, you’ve got no reason not to keep in touch.” Jim held back a sigh of relief and rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, old man.” Phil smiled indulgently while Chris pulled his ear in protest, and a strange sense of comfort washed over Jim. “I’m going to head out now, I guess. Thanks for having me aboard.” Jim made eye contact with Senn across the room, who nodded and led Jim out the door.


	2. A Scheme for Making Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s important to note that Jim had not actually wanted to come to Vulcan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! And aware that my tags are all screwy!  
> And for anyone curious, the ten day schedule is real and I swear on my mother's name I'll keep to it, but my computer was broken for like half a month and I only recently got it replaced.  
> Trigger warnings for heavily implied child abuse, mentions of death, and loosely implied sexual assault  
> Please dm/ contact me on tumblr for any questions or concerns

4 years and a lifetime ago was the second time James Tiberius Kirk should have died. Far from the second near death experience, far from the first time it’d been because Frank was tired and repressed and felt the need to bruise Jim’s skin with it. Jim kept a lot of lists.  

But this time around, Frank had choked Jim unconscious and still hadn’t held back on his drunken rampage, and Jim had woken up skin bare and bleeding out in the backyard. Frank had finished taking out his regrets on Jim’s nine year old frame and left him out and untended to drink himself into further oblivion, and Jim shouldn’t have woken up in time to stop himself from losing too much blood.

Jim shouldn’t have been able to reasonably tape up his multiple lacerations with literal duct tape.

Jim shouldn’t have been able to get his skin broken so much and so deep without some serious organ or tissue damage.

Jim should have died.

 

5 hours later was the third time James Tiberius Kirk should have died, when he drove his Pop’s old car - the one with the original 20th century frame and a hover engine his Gram once said George and Winona had pulled together from scraps as kids - off a cliff, and didn’t remember jumping out.

He got his name wrote up in some fraud of a police report from the local cops who didn’t really care about George Kirk: Starfleet Hero’s kid being a fuckup.

“Listen, son,” Chief Charles had said, a condescending smile on his sweet old face, “I dunno what delusions of grandeur those bigshot Starfolks are putting into your head, but I definitely ain’t let Georgie and Nona’s boy go down in some juvenile system. ‘Specially not after that no good Junior fucked off and left poor Frankie deal with you alone.”

Jim knew well how much stock the local cops put in his word, and picked his way out of his cell and was halfway out of Riverside by the time poor Frankie marched into the precinct frothing at the mouth.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s important to note that Jim had not actually wanted to come to Vulcan.

It seemed that the crew had assumed that he did, and Jim hadn’t bothered to correct them because he knew there really wasn’t a better alternative. It wasn’t like he could just stay aboard, and even if he was pretty sure the crew themselves had, surprisingly, no ill will towards Jim Kirk, he didn’t really trust StarFleet. He never really had, and it hadn’t exactly gotten better given… recent events. Like it or not, it was better than any options, and that was enough. But Jim had not actually wanted to come to Vulcan.

He felt that in his bones now, getting stared down by a tall Vulcan woman and the smallest Vulcan Jim had ever seen.

“You will reside here for an indeterminate period under the guardianship of my bondmate, T’Samahr. She will also be an instructor at you school and will be well equipped to aid you with any acclimation struggles you may encounter.”

“Dif tor heh sumsa,” he greeted, somehow combining the ramrod straight posture requirement of the ta’al and the plain Vulcan tone with his sleaziest grin.

“Sochya eh dif,” responded Senn’s son in kind.

Senn’s bondmate looked Jim over with sharp grey eyes. “Sochya eh dif,” she said finally. “Kirk James Tiberius. You may call me T’Ker T’Samahr. We hope you feel welcomed in our home.”

Jim almost snorted. He’d thought Vulcans weren’t allowed to lie.

“I am S'yekh Pi’hirat Tekh-nat,” cuts in Senn’s son. “You may call me Tekh-nat. I am 10 years of age in correspondence with the Terran calendar. I have been asked to guide you through any confusion that may emerge due to cultural differences, as similarity in age is of import to young humans.”

“You talk real nice,” Jim drawled, with the thickest Iowan accent he’d used since he hitchhiked his way through the last cornfield and never looked back. It was a challenge, because Vulcan and Iowan accents don’t match - Vulcan and bad grammar even less so - but it was so very worth it for the fleeting panic and confusion that crossed Tekh-nat’s tiny baby Vulcan face. And hey, T’Ker T’Samahr might not be an exception in the Vulcan way of open disdain for humanity and their illogicality, but Jim was damn good with kids, regardless of species. By the time he got himself kicked out of this joint, he was gonna convince the tiny one that humanity as a whole, at least, wasn’t dreadful. Jim winked. Tekh-nat looked concerned.

As Senn and T’Samahr separated themselves to talk in low voices in a corner, Jim found himself wondering at the architecture. He’d never seen Vulcan architecture in person before, and he was one of those colossally boring people who found that sort of thing interesting. Sue him. He marveled at the high ceilings, at the geometric curvatures and twists in the structure of just the front foyer. Tekh-nat caught him looking, and offered to show Jim the rest of the house.

“I may be able also to show your room before Mother and Father end talking,” he said in rough Standard. Jim laughed.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he replied in Vulcan as they walked. Tekh-nat’s eyebrows lifted into his hair, the way Senn’s did some time, but with his facial expressions less restricted.

“I was unaware you spoke Vulcan. You speak it well.”

“It was the second non-Terran language I ever learned.”

“Are you skilled with languages?”

“I speak many fluently, though it may be less to do with skill and more that I find it to be fun.”

Tekh-nat cocked his head in confusion, but opened a door in front of him rather than pursuing a line of questioning. “This is the room we have prepared for you.” Jim smiled and stepped through the arching doorframe, and his jaw dropped.

Jim had never had a big room. The time in between Frank and Tarsus had mostly been lived in trucks, caravans, and cheap, rotting motels. His room at the old Kirk estate had been pretty spacious, but by the time he was 5 he was sleeping in a nook above the tool shed to avoid confrontation. The only other contender was the room at his Aunt’s house on Tarsus, and aside from the fact that he was only there a few months before it all went to shit, it wasn’t a lot of space. It had room for a comfortable bed, which was new, and a bookshelf, which he loved, but not much else.

This room was something else entirely. Jim stood with his mouth open in the doorway for a moment, tentatively touching the wall as though checking it was real. This room was _gorgeous._ Not only was it so gigantic he had to step inside and do a 360 to see the whole thing, it was furnished and lit like it was straight out of a design magazine. On his left was the bed, larger than queen sized and low to the ground, with a backlit headboard and a tall, draping canopy. The high, twisted, arched ceilings from before came down to meet the walls at a braided crown support above wall-length windows. The windows themselves were opened out to a balcony, allowing a soft breeze to run through thick blue curtains. On one side was a lounge chair and a small coffee table, and on the other was another wall. It was split by a large archway leading to a study lined with fully stocked bookshelves, where a PADD and computer lay atop a beautiful wooden escritoire.

“Will this be suitable?” Tekh-nat asked. “We do not have any human luxuries in our home, but I am certain if there is something more you need, we could obtain it for you.”

Jim gave an incredulous huff. “If you could marry a room on Vulcan, this one and I would already be wed.” He flashed Tekh-nat a cheeky grin, and was too distracted to revel in his bewilderment. He flopped onto the bed, laughing. “This is incredible. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, of course. Shall I allow you to unpack before mealtime?”

Jim took that for what it was and let the tiny Vulcan dismiss himself. He took his comm out of his pocket and stared at it for a second and let himself click on a contact.

Commander Christopher Pike’s voice layered over top of a crowded spacedock, urgently muttering to someone about coils.  
“Bad time?” Jim asks. There’s a brief pause at the other end before he’s being pulled into a holochat, and the Miru blinks into view behind Chris’ grinning face.

“Jimmy! Miss me already?”

“Dear god, no, you old man, I’m just reflecting on my escape from your clutches.” Chris’ grin widens.

“Guys. Guys! Jimmy’s on the line, come say hi!”

A chorus of voices call his name, and half the junior engineering crew is suddenly crowded in view.

“How’re you likin’ the Vulcans, kiddo?” Ensign Channel called from somewhere in the thrall.

“How’re the Vulcans likin’ you, eh?” teased Junior Lieutenant Singh before Jim could get a word in.

“Ya think I’d still be here if they’d gotten a chance to get to know me yet? Nah, I’m waitin’ till ya fuck off to the stars and they’re well and truly stuck with me.”

“Language, punk!” called an authoritative voice from the background.

“Sorry, Captain!” Jim let the crew tease him and check in until they went back to work, leaving him on the line alone with Chris, who stepped away from the crew to give them some room to talk.

Before he had to hang up, he let the grin slip off his face to offer Jim a very serious look. “Everything okay, Jimmy? Really?”

Jim thinks back to T’Samahr’s barely contained distaste, her asking him to call her ‘teacher’ in her own house. He thinks to how he’d gotten accustomed to people genuinely smiling when they see him over the past couple months, and how achingly comfortable it had felt to pretend he wasn’t noticing how much he wasn’t wanted in this house. He thought about the most comfortable bed he’d ever had and the small boy who could barely tamper his curiosity at the unfamiliar concept of the Jim Kirk factor.

“Yeah, really. Everything’s okay, Chris.”

“Call again soon, kiddo. Phil’ll be ticked he missed you,” he said, letting out a soft smile.

“Yeah, yeah. I gotta have someone to talk to before I set a secure line for my kids, I guess.”

“I _guess.”_ Chris laughed and waved his goodbyes.

Jim fell back into the soft mattress and stared at the ceiling and thought about how when he’d told Chris everything was okay it almost hadn’t been a lie.

He lasted in peace for about a minute before pushing himself up to walk over to the study and turn on the computer. He was pleased to find that the ShiKar Preparatory Academy files were unlocked. Not that them being closed ever kept him out, but Jim was still unfamiliar with Vulcan code and often found himself with very little new information every time he’d tried before to get through. He couldn’t even find his year’s curriculum, or their course requirements. Vulcans were incredibly private about the strangest things.

The personnel directory listed S'yekh Pa’rau T’Samahr as a professor of Stellar Cartography. Further investigation found that her class was recommended to Class 23 students, and though Jim wasn’t quite sure what that meant, he took a glance at her syllabus and started scanning for the books on the shelves. He opened up a copy of _The Ambiguity of Sector Definition in Three Dimensional Scale Models_ by Tchjen Kaa T’Saal and a some loose leaf he’d found in the escritoire and started to read.

Two hours later he’d gotten to fair point of understanding with some decent annotations and points for discussion, and looked up abruptly from a confusing section he’d had difficulty understanding how to translate when a knock came at the door. He turned, startled.

“Come in.” The door opened to T’Samahr, and Jim hastily tried to tidy the notes strewn across his lap and scrambled to his feet, snapping to attention like he’d seen the crew do when Chris or Jenza walked into a room.

“T’Kar! Hello! I wasn’t expecting…” He trailed off. He wasn’t expecting what? That she’d walk to a room in her own house?

“I came to inform you that dinner is ready in the dining room.” Jim nodded, hoping he hadn’t worsened T’Samahr’s impression of him with how he was sitting, all curled up in the chair by the window with a leg up on the table and how he worked with so little clear organization. He’d spent most of his life teaching himself things in attics and the backs of trucks, and could never really learned how to work with the whole sitting studiously in desks in rows thing. Senn hadn’t been too fond of that himself, and he was used to human eccentricity. Hell, even the few human teachers Jim had had over the years found it disrespectful.

T’Samahr stared at him analytically for a while before she spoke again. “That is by Tchjen Kaa T’Saal.”

Jim gaped a little, then nodded tentatively. “I saw it on your class syllabus and thought I ought to give it a try.”

T’Samahr stood silently for a moment. “The class I teach is rather difficult, and this tends to be one of the harder works to comprehend.”

Jim wondered if he’d insulted her somehow. “Right. Sorry,” he said, just in case.

She frowned. “I do not think I’ve given you any cause to apologize.” They stood like that for a moment more, unmoving and stoic, like an old Western standoff. “Did you have any thoughts?

Jim nodded slowly. “... a few…” T’Samahr said nothing, so he continued. “I found her perceived solutions to the incalculable angles tended to focus strongly on a traditional rectangular prismic projection model, when we could alter those projections for navigational purposes rather than vice versa?”

“An astute observation.” She stepped away from the door. “I would be interested in discussing this book further at supper if you find it agreeable.”

Jim waited until her back was turned and pinched his arm. He winced and pumped a fist in the air.

Jim hadn’t wanted to come to Vulcan, but he’d be damned if he didn’t do his level best to make the most of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is abbreviated from the quote "Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind" from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions if anyone was curious!  
> Hit me up at atiredpan.tumblr.com to talk about my writing, Star Trek, or your local hot spot for existentialism.


	3. Poetry in the Raw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Language is confusing, no matter how fluent you may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha. So, apparently, I don't care all that much for my mother's name. Oops. I know after floundering so much it loses its meaning, but I promise I'm back on track now. I was in a not-great place at the end of last school year, then I was gone most of the summer, but I'm back now. And I think I'll stay that way? We'll see. TW for: Blood mentions, vague allusions to gruesome topics.

The fourth time James Tiberius Kirk should have died, he learned that you can stitch up knife wounds with dental floss, and that gas station attendees on the side of a road from nowhere to nowhere don’t bother to ask questions about visibly injured nine-year-olds with crumpled bills instead of credits. 

It wasn’t like Jim wasn’t expecting it. The guy was willing to pick up a preadolescent hitchhiker, it doesn’t say much towards his ethical standards. Still, Jim found it in him to be annoyed when he got stabbed in the abdomen and tossed from the hovercar into a roadside ditch. He’d hoped to make it at least out of the state before he caught an actual murderer, but he hadn’t even crossed the Iowa River yet. 

Jim was thinking a lot of things while he was walking, because it was hot outside and he was bleeding out and still objectively certain this was the better situation he could be inn right now. He was thinking about Sam, and about how things had gotten worse in the year since he’d left. He was thinking about Ms. Lettons, the librarian, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be reminding Jim that he was an embarrassment  for wanting to read about space, and starships, and all the things his family already left this town for. About how all 1,264 in Riverside seemed to know exactly who James Kirk was supposed to be except Jim. About how all of the people at the galas thrown in George Kirk’s honor looked him in the eye and saw 5 minutes of his dad’s life, and nothing else. 

He was thinking about he wished he hadn’t crashed the car off a cliff before he’d gotten out of the town where everyone knows his face, when he stumbles upon the gas station at least an hour later, where he shouldn’t have realistically made it before passing out from exhaustion and blood loss. He definitely trails blood on the floor as he goes to the counter to buy rubbing alcohol, floss, and a pack of needles before locking himself in the bathroom in an attempt to stitch up the stab wound. He uses the rest of the cash he stole from the guy who stabbed him to buy up on food and get the hell out before the attendant noticed he pocketed his keys.

He did finally make it out of Riverside  before he considered breaking down. He’d ditched the car for a rental with the help of the first time Jim actually stole credits when he hacked into a bank and a voice modulating 2030’s telephone. He could barely pass for 10, let alone 16, but he followed traffic laws well enough that no one was about to pull him over in the traffic congestion of Des Moines. He wasn’t quite home free, but that was more for lack of a destination than anything else. He could totally break down about now, if need be.

Instead, he pulled a cookie out of the pack he’d bought and kept driving until the hovercar died.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing about T’Samahr was that as soon as she got over the fact that Jim was an abrasive and emotional human child, she was as fond of him as Vulcans could be. Within a month of living under her roof, he’d been introduced to at least a couple dozen of her colleagues as her ward, and in turn had been essentially adopted by the teaching staff as a pet. He still, unfortunately, has no understanding of the school itself. He has asked five different people why he hasn’t been going to classes, and each has told him that he’s been exempt from the current practical application quarter, and told when the new quarter would start. No one will even tell him what grade he’ll be going into so that he can look into the curriculum on the school server. When he asks T’Samahr, she says to tell her if any elective courses are of interest to him, and that she’ll arrange for his placement tests before the next quarter begins. Jim has no idea what that means.

Listen, Jim’s been to school, okay? He got halfway through 3rd grade in Iowa, and when he was with the circus Amelda had made him take all kinds of standardized tests. He was in 6th grade for the first few months of Tarsus, before everything went to shit. He just doesn’t understand what the Vulcans think school systems are, and no one has bothered to try to explain them. He’s managed to parse that Class 23 curriculums are harder than Class 5 curriculums, but he doesn’t know what class his age group is meant to be, and he doesn’t know if it’s acceptable or not that he struggles with anything higher than Class 20, or that he can’t understand any of the material for most things marked Class 24 and higher. 

He has a bit over a week before his placement tests, whatever those may be, and Jim is studying. Tekh-nat has placement tests too, so the two of them usually end up sitting by each other in the main library, which is more helpful than Jim would have expected. There’s the part of him that just misses being around his kids, especially now that their recovery is mostly done and they aren’t all in one place anymore. But Jim also just honestly  _ likes _ Tekh-nat. The kid has no problem asking Jim for help when he doesn’t understand something, like how to solve math problems he hasn’t fully grasped, and how to translate Federation Standard. In turn, Jim asks Tekh-nat questions about Vulcan phrases he hasn’t seen, and how to navigate the ShiKar Preparatory Academy databases. When they take a moment to stretch and grab something to drink, Tekh-nat makes his favorite Vulcan teas, and Jim shows him the synthesizer codes for the best hot cocoa. At one point, with six days left before the exams, Jim buries his head in his arms and complains about how overwhelming it is to study for all the curriculums without knowing what classes he’s even going to have to take.

Tekh-nat looks at him strangely. “Of course you do not know what classes you are going to take. What did you assume placement tests were for?”

Jim shifts. “I don’t know, to see how advanced our understanding of topics is?”

“Yes? Exactly?” Jim and Tekh-nat look at each other in bewilderment for a moment before Tekh-nat jumps up suddenly and pushes himself in front Jim’s PADD. “These are the math classes. These are the science classes. These are the language classes, the history classes, and the elective classes. You understand this much?”

Jim hadn’t, before, because he hadn’t thought to categorize them anything beyond the number labels, but looking at how Tekh-nat pointed them out it seemed pretty clear. He nodded.

“Then out of the math classes, which one are you most interested in taking?”

“I… I think I understand them all up to class 20?”

“No, not the level, the class.”

Jim stares. Tekh-nat looks like he’s dawning on some kind of realization.

“What do you think this says?” Tekh-nat points to the number class next to one of the classes.

“Dah-leh rehkuh mohrn. Class 23,” he translated into Standard.

“And this one?” He points to the top of the page.

“Rivak la’ka-yehat, available classes.” Jim pauses. Tekh-nat looks to be almost vibrating with frustration.

“You think class and class to mean the same thing?”

Jim blinks. 

“I think, James, that you should tell my mother if anything you see interests you, and take the tests that will lead you to take. Trust that they will place you into a class befitting yourself.” 

“And would that be class or class?”

Tekh-nat shot him a patented Vulcan stare and before shoving a math problem in his direction.

Instead of asking T’Samahr to explain, six days later at the crack of dawn, Jim took all twenty of the placement tests. Four days after that, T’Samahr called him and Tekh-nat down to read their results and quarter schedules before dinner.

“I commend you on your ambition,” she commented offhand before handing him his file. It didn’t sound passive aggressive, so he just took it without asking what she meant. He saw all 20 classes listed on his schedule, and had a moment of confusion where he remembered having only 5 classes in school. But hey; Vulcans were all pretty academically capable, and farbeit from Jim to decide how school schedules should work.

 

When properly transliterated into Vuhlkansu, James Tiberius Kirk beomes Ka’rik Tah’be’ris Jaya’mes. This is the first thing Jim ever learned of the language, and it was possibly the most time Hoshi ever spent on a single lesson. When he’s dialing Chris that night, sprawled over the giant bed that still doesn’t feel quite like his own, it’s all that’s on his mind.

“My, that’s quite a unique looking name!” She had been looking over his shoulder as he tried to copy from a book she’d left out on her front table. In hindsight, she’d probably left it there for him, but in the moment he thought he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “Do you mind if I help you clean it up?”

He’d shaken his head tentatively, and she’d sat down on the ground with him, bad back and all, to guide him through his mistakes in ways that made little sense to a 12 year old with no understanding in Vulcan and no formal language education. 

“Your family identifier falls between your personal identifiers. First is the name a stranger would call you, then someone you respect, then a peer or child. A rather illogical custom altogether, don’t you agree?” She’d say.

“Careful with the angles there; it’s legible, but it should be rounder.”

“You’ve added a possession classifier. You can’t just add dashes because they’re pretty, darling.”

“Lovely penmanship. We’ll make a calligrapher out of you.”

“Would you like to learn it in Pre-Reformation?”

When Jim’s hand had hurt too much to keep writing, she’d taken the workbook from him with a pleased expression. 

“Your name is rather formal looking in Vuhlkansu, you know.”

“So no different than Standard, then,” he’d grinned, and she’d smiled back, wide like he didn’t know adults were allowed to.

“Very different, actually. If we were to directly translate your name to Vulcan, it’d be far more average. Of the church, for Kirk, by the river Tiber, for Tiberius, follower, for James, o. Right?” Jim didn’t know this, but nodded. “That’d come out looking pretty normal. ‘T’Dva Mas’tiber Zahelsu,’ I think. All in all a very Vulcan sort of name.”

“So should I write that, then?”

“Don’t you dare,” she smiled. “We don’t translate our names like that. Your name would be said how you wrote it there; ‘Ka’rik Tah’be’ris Jaya’mes.’ It sounds like a name that should belong to a great man.”

“Definitely not for me then,” Jim joked. “Is it really all that great? It just sounds… clunkier. I think.”

“It is an honourable name for an honourable little boy, because it tells your story, not your home,” Hoshi had said, with an unyielding finality.

“What story?” Jim had huffed anyway, because he was precocious and proud of it. She’d smiled at him with an interesting light in her eye Jim would later attribute to her eagerness to dissect language.

“Literally it is roughly ‘Without equal, beside nothing unattainable, reverberating crossway.’” Jim had opened his mouth to make a snarky comment he’s forgotten, but Hoshi cut him off. “I know it sounds crude, but it follows a traditional name pattern of just Post Reformation Romantic Vulcan. It’s interpretive, you have to bring the story from the words, not the other way around. Your name says, ‘On the divergence of living paths, no choice leads to failure, for I am uncontested.’” 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he’d whined, because the gravitas felt inapplicable.

“It does.” She’d looked him in the eye, then. “If you would like, I would be honoured to teach you to understand why, Tah’be’ris.”

“Jimmy?” called a voice from the present in Jim’s PADD. “Sorry I wasn’t picking up, the Captain needed to see me about something.”

“Oh, yeah, no problem.” Jim shook himself awake. “I just wanted to tell you I’m starting school tomorrow!” he excitedly shoved his schedule towards the display so Chris could read it.

He whistled. “Your name’s a bit long like that, huh?”

“My name’s stuffy as shit in Standard too, Chris.”

“Language. And it may be stuffy, but I gotta say, it looks awful pretty like that.” Chris laughs lightly, and moves on to talking about his class load. 

Jim just thinks, yeah. That’s what Hoshi was trying to say, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is abbreviated from the quote "Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable" by W.H. Auden, if anyone was curious!  
> Hit me up at atiredpan.tumblr.com to talk about my writing, Star Trek, or the cost of trying to be a decent person.


	4. The Secret to Getting Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim meets someone who helps alter the course of his life.
> 
> Later, on Vulcan, Jim meets someone who helps alter the course of his life.
> 
> (Sorry, I couldn't resist) (Also please read my tags for this chapter they're important today.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, rigger warnings for: Heavy allusions to physical and sexual abuse, neglect from authorities. Message me if you have any questions regarding specifics. If I've missed ANYTHING that would be best served mentioned, please let me know. Now that that's over with I would like to briefly apologize to Child Protective Services and the youth justice system in general; you're getting a pretty bad rap in this fic. I have reasoning for this that will become clear in later chapters, but I would like to say this is not a reflection of our actual CPS system in any way, I don't have the experience or understanding of the topic to even begin to broach that.  
> Lastly and I guess to the point of most narrative importance, I'm changing the way I've been writing Vulcan names. Up until now I've been writing them in the English "transliteration," not the Vulcan one, which I realized as I was writing this chapter makes no sense. So for anyone who has already read the last few chapters, T'Mar will be refered to as T’Samahr, and Teknat as Tekh-nat. Otherwise there isn't much real difference.

The fifth time Jim should have died, he joined the circus instead.

Jim hadn’t been to Des Moines in years. Until he was around 5 years old, the general public had been all over “The Kelvin Baby,” and Jim had been at the smiling poster boy of The Kelvin Memorial Hospital, and The George Samuel Kirk Center for Education, and the Kirk Juvenile Detention Facility, and, on Jim’s favorite occasion, The Winona Lawson Kirk Widow’s Foundation. Then Sam had skipped town after an evening with Frank stripped him of all sensation in his left leg, Frank had gotten tired of sharing Jim’s pretty little face, and Jim didn’t leave Riverside until he was running for his fucking life. Anyway, Des Moines has gotten bigger.

The buildings have been growing taller for centuries, trying to house the growing populations that for some reason refused to seek outer space. Des Moines was 90 square miles and 600,000 people, overcrowded, and without the magnetism of better known, larger cities.

Jim _loved_ it.

Or, at least until he’d wandered into a mall to replace his bloody clothes and he bumped into the screaming man with an old pistol phaser and no stun safety.

 

“Watch where you’re going, kid,” the man hissed, when Jim tripped over his feet into the muzzle of the same make and model as he’d been facing down for years and called the 5th time the charm as the familiar buzz of a phaser charging shook his lips. At the last moment, the guy cusses and shoves Jim off the platform down to a lower floor, and Jim watches as the phaser fire meant for the inside of his head sends a sunglasses kiosk flying. “Shit, there she fuckin’ goes, that fuckin’ bitch, I’ll kill her.

“You thieving whore! Give me my credits or I’ll take your fucking neck and hand you over!”

Jim turned from where he was crumpled on the ground to see a young brunette woman sprinting in his direction in a ballgown with intimidatingly high pumps, grabbing a coffee out of someone’s hand as she passed them. Jim forgot to panic in his confusion; this was not a classy enough joint to justify designer. He was shaken out his daze when the woman reached him and looked him down with a disapproving frown.

“We need to fix this,” she muttered, then started running again as the yelling man rounded the corner from the stairway. She slowed for a minute to run backwards. “Well? Aren’t you coming?”

Jim was not sure why he would risk the wrath of the yelling man for some crazy lady who took some kind of issue with him, but he was running after her before his mind caught up with his actions. She grinned and pulled him into the storage room of a clothes store, and he found himself cackling softy with her from a pile of blue sundresses as the yelling man passed them.

 

“Yes, yes, this’ll do,” she muttered, facedown in the pile. When Jim shot her a quizzical look, she lifted up one of the dresses.

“I think that’s a touch too small for you,” Jim joked, because it was an extra small and the lady was a solid 5’9.

“Not for me, you fool child, I told you we need to fix... This!” She gestured to all of Jim. “As much as you may be rocking it, the bloody grunge look won’t do at all!”

Jim had forgotten about his original reason for being at the mall in all the excitement. He looked down at his bloodstained clothes, looked up at the woman, back down at his clothes, and flushed. “Oh, right… that.”

The woman nodded in understanding. “It’s just like that sometimes, I get it. Go on, put on the dress, I’ll worry about accessories,” she said, and disappeared into a pile of hats. Jim left the storeroom to ask the very bored teenaged store attendant for a dressing room.

When Jim had changed, which took an inconveniently long amount of time taking the cleaning of dried blood into consideration, the woman was waiting for him. Before he could say a word, she’d pinned him up with a large straw sunhat and circular glasses that messed with his depth perception.

 

“I look like the 21st century rose from the grave to slap me in the face.” Jim did a spin in the mirror, fixing his hair, and posing. “But in a good way, I guess.”

“Obviously in a good way, you have an audition to get to.”

Jim nods absently, before double taking and shooting the lady with an incredulous look. “The fuck? For what?”

“An illegal circus.”

“How can a circus be illegal?”

“Pretty easily, actually. We never pay for performance permits, and most of us are hookers and thieves.” She grinned, then turned a bit serious.

“Look, kid, if you want I can just head you off to the local CPS office and have you taken back home or whatever…”

(Jim had tried reaching out to CPS twice before. Both times, he’d categorically refused to say anything other than he couldn’t go back home to Frank. Both times, he’d been sat alone in a room with a crinkly shock blanket while a crowd of suit-wearing professionals pretended he couldn’t hear through the wall.

“We have 12 different sapient species trafficking cases open just in the county,” growled one. “We don’t have the resources to deal with the controversy this kid would spark just because he misses his mom.”

Jim didn’t go in a 3rd time.)

“You wouldn’t be the first of us to be runnin’ bloody from their pops, and you’re sure as fuck not the first kid we’ve raised,” the lady offered when Jim had been silent too long.

“You’re not gonna convince me to run away and join the circus like a romantic orphan, ma’am. I don’t even know your name.” Jim grumbled.

“Amelda.” She said. “So how ‘bout it, kid?”

“Fuckin’....” Jim sighed. “Fine. My name’s JT, take me to the fucking circus.”

 

* * *

 

On Jim’s first day at Shi’Kar Preparatory Academy, he learns that he was meant to choose between the classes he was offered to decide what he wanted to study for the next year. He was one of only 12 students in the entire school who had chosen to take all 20 courses. On a scale where the average 13 year old Vulcan took level 16 classes, the lowest class he had tested into was an 18 for Inter-stellar Ethnology, and the highest was a 27 in Communications. Before even reaching his first class of the day, several instructors, some that he knew and some that he didn’t, had commended him in the Vulcan way Jim had learned was code for ‘fuck you, really.’

Jim was starting off the year against passive adversity for his humanity, and higher expectations than could be justified pushing onto any 13 year old.

He couldn’t have made it more ideal if he’d engineered the situation himself.

 

The first of his classes for the day was Class 25 Temporal Mechanics, one of Jim’s better subjects. It was lecture based course by one of Jim’s favorite of T’Samahr's colleagues, a crotchety old Vulcan who thought humanity had no right being anywhere near the foundations of space travel. Jim arrived early as a show of dominance.

A young Vulcan arrived only minutes after Jim, which was strange because Jim had come very early. Obnoxiously early, even. An hour early. Anyway, T’Kar Nakaratik shot the Vulcan boy the same look of not-disdain he had been hitting Jim with, so. Kinship, or whatever.

(Years and years later, Jim would dramatically reference this moment as fate, the moment when all the winds were still, etc. Spock would act resigned and exhausted, but wouldn’t point out the illogicalities of fate, and everyone on the bridge would sigh at hearing the story for the nth time but listen anyway because Jim is a damn good storyteller.)

“Your _pelal_ is tied far too tight around the waist, you look... unkempt,” says the Vulcan, sitting stiffly in the seat beside Jim. More specifically, he says _kitork-guv,_ which might as well mean promiscuous, because no matter where in the universe you go, someone will think your body is their business. It is the most direct insult Jim has received all day, and he wants to both punch the boy in the face, and also maybe kiss him. Direct confrontation is an incredible and familiar affair.

“How else am I gonna show off my curves?” Jim jokes, putting his hip onto the desk in front of him for maximum dramatic effect. “Come now, you can’t just put in a snide aside about my debauchery and not introduce yourself.

“I am S’kha-lan T’sgzhai Spock,” said the Vulcan. “You may call me S’kha-lan. Or S’chn, should the Standard transliteration suit you better.” The boy paused, and said with barely a change in expression at all, “I apologize for the way you interpreted my words. I admit to harboring a slight prejudice upon having heard word of a human classmate. I shall meditate upon it later.”

“Wow, that is the most intentionally rude apology I’ve ever heard, I’m impressed” laughs Jim, “You and I are gonna get along great, _S’kha-lan_. The name’s-”

“Ka’rik Tah’be’ris Jaya’mes, I am aware. You’re rather infamous.”

“Awe, thanks doll,” Jim says, pleasuring in the way the language fractured around his words. “You can call me Jaya’mes.”

 

“I see you’ve found the only way to consort downwards, Ri’etwel,” came a nasally voice from behind.

“I implore you do not lower the name of your family to this illogical name-calling, L’shai-fan _._ ”

“Dude, you just called me a hoe like 10 seconds ago,” Jim muttered under his breath in Standard. Judging from S’kha-lan grinding his heel into his foot, (very illogically if you ask Jim) he’d understood anyway.

“I say as I see,” continues L’shai-fan, not having heard James. “And you are not one to speak of lowering the name of family, Ri’etwel.”

Jim’s mouth curved into an ‘o.’ “Oh, it’s xenophobia,” he says like a revelation. He took a better look at L’shai-fan then. He was taller than Jim, clearly at least a few years older, reaching the plateau of puberty where his skin wasn’t clear but he had settled into his height. He looked back at S’kha-lan, who was a much more intriguing subject for some reason. “Were you born off of the planet, S’kha-lan?”

“I was born in the hospital ward of my father’s estate,” sniffs S’kha-lan with the air of indifference Jim had admired from all the older Vulcans he’d met.

“To his _mother,_ ” says L’shai-fan without it.

S’kha-lan’s fingers briefly tighten around the seams of his pelal. “To my human mother, he means.”

L’shai-fan sneers, and Jim can’t help but think that S’kha-lan seems to be acting far more Vulcan than he was, half-human or not.

So he says, “You know, L’shai-fan, S’kha-lan here seems to be acting far more Vulcan than you are, half-human or not.” Before the other boy could get a word in, he continued, “Also I bet his mom is cool as shit.” There is no Vulcan translation for that phrase.

L’shai-fan was struck, and S’kha-lan picked up the slack. “She is rather ‘cool’ as you say, but please spare L’shai-fan. He doesn’t quite understand Standard yet.”

Jim cackled, and stared L’shai-fan up and down. “I said you’re a dirty fiend,” Jim smiles. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go assert my human dominance as per the complex and intricate traditions of my people.”

S’kha-lan looks almost as perplexed as L’shai-fan and this is the moment Jim makes it his lifelong mission to teach S’kha-lan his human culture.

But for now, he strides across the room to talk up the students filtering in and seats himself firmly in the middle of the crowd. It parts around him, but Jim is confident the Kirk Factor will kick in eventually. It’s worked on people who’ve been tasked with bringing him in dead or alive, (preferably dead) and it can’t be that much harder with Vulcans.

 

Spoiler Alert: It is.

The class starts and Jim knows all the answers to all the challenge questions because he learned Temporal Mechanics from the Chief Engineer of a Starfleet ARS.

While the practical application quarter that had been going on since before he’d came to Vulcan was a chance for older Vulcan youths to work temporarily in higher than entry level positions that may pertain to the classes or fields of study they wish to pursue, (Tekh-nat’s words, after he finished Vulcan not-laughing at Jim for accidentally taking 20 classes) that still left Jim with comparably privileged experience.

Because while he may have obtained most of the knowledge his classmates had been formally studying on the subject in musty attics with cheap hijacked internet while on the road (or the run, if you were a pessimist who hated joy and circuses), when T’Kar Nakaratik asked the class the quickest short-term measure against exacerbated internal damage to transporters, for instance, Jim had first-hand experience from tagging along with Genna when an ion storm happened to fall into their path.

All in all it was a productive day. In less than an hour Jim learned the one thing humanity would probably be best served to know about Vulcans; they get jealous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from "The secret to getting ahead is getting started," Oscar Wild. If you'd like to stare into the void and regret ages past, hit me up at atiredpan.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to ask me anything, hit me up on tumblr. atiredpan.tumblr.com


End file.
